8 BOOKS A YEAR

8 BOOKS A YEAR is for everyone who loves to be regularly hijacked into unknown territory – by rare and outstanding non-fiction books. It works as a curated subscription that you can take up at any time, shipped worldwide from Berlin.

DECEMBER 2017

Daniela Comani
1975 – Diario di strada
Archive Books, 2017

DEAR FRIEND OF 8 BOOKS A YEAR,

How old are you? I was born in 1972 and some of my strongest childhood memories relate to cars. I still know how incredibly relaxing it felt to be lying down, sleeping unstrapped in the back of my parent’s car when we went on vacation together. I also remember when I went 200 kilometers per hour for the very first time: our father had picked up a his new Mercedes-Benz “123” – I remember that it was a brown one – and tested its limits while our mom and I sat next to him, both of us on the edge of our seats, but for different reasons (I enjoyed it very much). The craziest situation I can recollect was probably the one when our mother had to drive me somewhere while a maneuver of the US military was taking place in the meadows directly in front of our house. She had a thin-walled red Renault 4 (a popular model at the time) and actually dared to enter the street on which terrifying American battle tanks were driving immediately in front of and behind our pretty little French car. I remembered this story when I rediscovered the “r4” in Daniela Comani’s book, right in between a Saab 99 and a Ford Capri. This book deals both with personal and collective memory. As a child, Daniela thoroughly noted all the plate numbers of the vehicles that overtook her parents’ car – or were overtaken by it – while she sat in the back and stared out the window. She often added the make and its specific model. Forty years later, Daniela stumbled over one of her old notebooks: a planner from 1975 with her list of cars. She did some research and found neutral photographs of the models which were taken by the manufacturers for brochures. What was “daily scenery” on our streets back then looks almost like an excerpt from a design museum now. Is it nostalgia playing a trick on us? Or do you think it’s possible that most things just looked better back in those days?

All my best,
Christian Kaspar Schwarm

Daniela Comani
1975 – Diario di strada
Archive Books, 2017

DEAR FRIEND OF 8 BOOKS A YEAR,

How old are you? I was born in 1972 and some of my strongest childhood memories relate to cars. I still know how incredibly relaxing it felt to be lying down, sleeping unstrapped in the back of my parent’s car when we went on vacation together. I also remember when I went 200 kilometers per hour for the very first time: our father had picked up a his new Mercedes-Benz “123” – I remember that it was a brown one – and tested its limits while our mom and I sat next to him, both of us on the edge of our seats, but for different reasons (I enjoyed it very much). The craziest situation I can recollect was probably the one when our mother had to drive me somewhere while a maneuver of the US military was taking place in the meadows directly in front of our house. She had a thin-walled red Renault 4 (a popular model at the time) and actually dared to enter the street on which terrifying American battle tanks were driving immediately in front of and behind our pretty little French car. I remembered this story when I rediscovered the “r4” in Daniela Comani’s book, right in between a Saab 99 and a Ford Capri. This book deals both with personal and collective memory. As a child, Daniela thoroughly noted all the plate numbers of the vehicles that overtook her parents’ car – or were overtaken by it – while she sat in the back and stared out the window. She often added the make and its specific model. Forty years later, Daniela stumbled over one of her old notebooks: a planner from 1975 with her list of cars. She did some research and found neutral photographs of the models which were taken by the manufacturers for brochures. What was “daily scenery” on our streets back then looks almost like an excerpt from a design museum now. Is it nostalgia playing a trick on us? Or do you think it’s possible that most things just looked better back in those days?

All my best,
Christian Kaspar Schwarm

Read Inscription

FEBRUARY 2018

Martin Grothmaak
evertime
An everlasting calendar, diary and sketch book
United Landscapes, 2018

Including an exclusive behind-the-scenes photograph for our suscribers

DEAR FRIEND OF 8 BOOKS A YEAR,

By chance, a smart man once met the devil in a breakfast bar. Being an atheist, the man didn’t believe that he was really talking to the guy who has been described as a “fallen angel” throughout the ages. But somehow he felt challenged and started to negotiate with the stranger. “Could you tell me the 3 most important things in life?” the devil asked. “What would they be?” he wanted to know. “Oh, that’s simple: health, wealth and love,” said the man, adding, “What serious problem could ever befall me if I could rest assured of these things?” The devil seemed to think about what he had just heard and answered, “You’re a clever man, so I’ll give you what you want. And my price is the same as always: your soul.” Since the man didn’t really believe that there is a soul or something like life after death, he said to himself, “Let’s give it a try!” “So we have a deal?” the devil asked. The man gave him a firm handshake and confirmed the contract. After 1 more drink the devil had to leave, but stopped in the doorway of the bar, turned and told the man, “I’m really sorry to say this, but I’ll insist on collecting your debt quite soon. You’ll experience great health, enormous wealth and incomparable love in your life – until tomorrow evening. I‘m afraid you forgot to add time to our deal.” I guess we can imagine the look on the man‘s face when he heard that. Time is something we should never take for granted. It’s precious, it‘s relative, it moves, it flies, it‘s up. This book might help to catch it and will become your most personal time capsule.

All my best,
Christian Kaspar Schwarm

DECEMBER 2017

Daniela Comani
1975 – Diario di strada
Archive Books, 2017

DEAR FRIEND OF 8 BOOKS A YEAR,

How old are you? I was born in 1972 and some of my strongest childhood memories relate to cars. I still know how incredibly relaxing it felt to be lying down, sleeping unstrapped in the back of my parent’s car when we went on vacation together. I also remember when I went 200 kilometers per hour for the very first time: our father had picked up a his new Mercedes-Benz “123” – I remember that it was a brown one – and tested its limits while our mom and I sat next to him, both of us on the edge of our seats, but for different reasons (I enjoyed it very much). The craziest situation I can recollect was probably the one when our mother had to drive me somewhere while a maneuver of the US military was taking place in the meadows directly in front of our house. She had a thin-walled red Renault 4 (a popular model at the time) and actually dared to enter the street on which terrifying American battle tanks were driving immediately in front of and behind our pretty little French car. I remembered this story when I rediscovered the “r4” in Daniela Comani’s book, right in between a Saab 99 and a Ford Capri. This book deals both with personal and collective memory. As a child, Daniela thoroughly noted all the plate numbers of the vehicles that overtook her parents’ car – or were overtaken by it – while she sat in the back and stared out the window. She often added the make and its specific model. Forty years later, Daniela stumbled over one of her old notebooks: a planner from 1975 with her list of cars. She did some research and found neutral photographs of the models which were taken by the manufacturers for brochures. What was “daily scenery” on our streets back then looks almost like an excerpt from a design museum now. Is it nostalgia playing a trick on us? Or do you think it’s possible that most things just looked better back in those days?

All my best,
Christian Kaspar Schwarm

SEPTEMBER 2017

Dennis DeSantis
Making Music
74 Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers
Ableton, 2015

DEAR FRIEND OF 8 BOOKS A YEAR,

Do you know what we believe to be the biggest misunderstanding about non-fiction books? It’s the idea that the more a title directly relates to the topic you’re interested in, the more you can learn from it. That’s why the bestseller lists are filled with so many how-to manuals and all sorts of self-help literature. It simply doesn't occur to most people to read an old travel report when they’re about to change jobs – why should they? Because it works. If we dare to read a book not just for its obvious content but also for what it can teach us on a completely different level, we open up a whole new universe of discovery and understanding. Isn’t this in fact the only way to create new and original ideas? As strategists we work with books on a daily basis and we actually made our Berlin office a library. Besides the knowledge our books offer, we also use them as inspirational tools. Every couple of days we build mood boards out of the most diverse books, just to become aware of the variety of meanings a specific term can have. Books have often helped us to develop radically new ideas – but believe me: It was never the ones we’d expected. And one more thing: It’s usually the right book that finds you, not the other way around. Even if we were to try to explain this as being some form of sub-conscious perception it still provides a strong argument for not always choosing the books which promise the most at first sight. So yes, I’m totally aware that most of our subscribers (probably 98 or 99 percent) don’t ever produce any electronic music. But since reading this well-made book for the first time I’ve really considered it an amazing advisor. It discusses a lot of different “problems” – and presents wonderful answers – not only for producers, but also for your life and business. We just have to do what musicians call “transposing”: performing a composition in a different key.

JULY 2017

Edition of 200 handbound copies, accompanied by a printed email from Robin Watkins for our subscribers

DEAR FRIEND OF 8 BOOKS A YEAR,

This book got me into trouble at first sight. I already had planned to pick a future project by its maker for 8 BOOKS A YEAR. When I discovered this treasure here I thought I’d have exactly 2 options: either sending out this book to you now – or waiting for the other one to be produced. But how stupid is this? Nobody, not even me, ever defined such a rule for us. So why not simply select both? I became aware that we might reduce our possibilities too often without any need to do so. There’s a witty quote from a rather famous American lawyer series (if you ever watched it you’ll know from which one): “What are your choices when someone puts a gun to your head? You take the gun. Or you pull out a bigger one. Or, you call their bluff. Or, you do any one of a hundred and forty six other things.” Or, how President Underwood (you know this one, don’t you?) stated: “If you don’t like how the table is set, turn over the table.” I also remember a gallerist who once said to me “there’s always another one” when I asked for an artwork which had been sold already. So, yes, there’s always another one: another option, another choice, another chance. And: another perspective! The theory in this book was originally published in 1924 by the Russian biophysicist Alexander Chizhevsky. He concluded: “The existence of a dependence of the behavior of humanity on sunspot activity should be considered established.” You should take a look at page 12 and read at least the summary on pages 23-25. Even if you don't agree, isn’t it refreshing to hear of such an extraordinary idea for the first time? It just opens something up in the mind and creates some form of constructive instability. The list of our choices is – always and literally – unlimited.

All my best,
Christian Kaspar Schwarm

JUNE 2017

A few days ago, documenta 14 opened in Kassel again. Since it only takes place every 5 years, expectations are always high. And there was something different this time: documenta opened first not in its hometown, but in Greece. The curators also made a motto out of what this implied: “Learning from Athens”. As much as I liked this surprising twist when I first read about it (most of the time it’s much more interesting to listen to the underdog than to the champion), I have to confess that I was a bit disappointed when I eventually visited Kassel. Instead of discovering a lot of inspiring, brave, uncommon and uncomfortable art, I was confronted with a myriad of critical (which I love) but obsessively direct and lecturing works which could already have been around a few decades ago. I think it’s a privilege of artists (and curators) to jump ahead of their times and to drive the discourse – and they definitely should make use of this privilege. After having walked around 1 day at documenta, I thought again about their motto, which I mentioned above. I guess we all agree that “learning from” somebody is always a great thing to do – as long as no one makes an imperative out of it. This just turns learning into teaching and dialogue into proclamation. The idea of knowing exactly what to do or how to deal with the challenges we all face today is an illusion we should scrupulously recognize as such. Therefore our new choice is not a book about documenta, but one about Athens. It provided me with a lot of fresh ideas and concepts on how some problems could be dealt with in a very different way. Problems we all know, ideas which can be realized everywhere. So, even if it’s not a book about art, it finally became my better documenta 14.

All my best,
Christian Kaspar Schwarm

MARCH 2017

2 years ago I stepped out of my own company. I had founded it 12 years earlier and nobody wanted me to leave. On the contrary: Most of my colleagues couldn’t understand why I’d leave a working environment which I had built myself and which I could have changed if I’d wanted to. So why did I do it? There were 2 reasons. The first one was just a feeling. It came overnight and grew constantly, from month to month. My second motive was a sudden insight: Even a place or a situation you created yourself can become a golden cage. You might still be able to change something there, but the task of rearranging it also carries the potential of preventing you from thinking about whether you should leave or not. Months after I dared to go, I found a 1-page PDF online with the title “Integrales Kompetenzmodell” (“Integrated Competence Model”). It was pretty shocking: Everything I had been feeling – my vague hunches – were precisely described in it. This document, published by a German institute, active in organization development and change management, is actually based on a sociological model called “Spiral Dynamics” and on the work of the American crossover-philosopher Ken Wilber. I dived deeper, read more about this concept and watched a lot of interviews with one of its pioneers, Don Beck. I can’t say that this changed my life (as mentioned, I had already done so), but it changed my perspective on the ongoing changes in the world. Don’t worry: It’s by far the most undogmatic and open-minded model I know. But if you’d like to understand better e.g. why populism is rearing its ugly head right now in so many wealthy countries, you’ll find some excellent answers in just the first 2 chapters of this book. It was published in 2000 but feels more topical than ever.

All my best,
Christian Kaspar Schwarm

JANUARY 2017

An older friend of mine is an experienced art collector. Some years ago, when I started to get to know him better, he revealed some of his secrets to me. One was about his insight that quite often those artworks in particular which had not been sold at the end of a gallery show became – in the long run – the most relevant and therefore valuable ones. And I also learned a German word from him which I didn’t know before: “Wahrnehmungswiderstand” – it describes the potential of an object to successfully resist being deciphered. It’s not only artworks that can have this weird quality but also books: The ones which strike me the most are actually those which unfold their multiple layers to me very slowly. I mean those books which do not support our lives by delivering a lot of tangible advice, but which make us think about life. Take Syria. We’ve heard and read so much about this country over the past few years. But for what reason? Can we still imagine another Syria, one without war and flight? Or even a “boring” Aleppo like the one Pier Paolo Tamburelli remembers in his introductory text? Are we able to see the beauty in the photos by Giovanna Silva which were glued by hand onto these travel guide copies from another era? Why did she – as the photographer and maker of this book – choose such an apologetic and modest way to present her work? And what is this book? A journey through time? A change of perspective? An exhibition? An archive? An accusation? An encouragement? You see: a lot of Wahrnehmungswiderstand we have to deal with. I promise, it’s worth it.

All my best,
Christian Kaspar Schwarm

NOVEMBER 2016

If you were given a time machine, what would you do? Without any doubt there are a lot of tempting possibilities. You could travel into the future to see whether it’s really possible to fall in love with a computer voice in, let’s say, 20 years. Or whether Apple stocks gained or lost value in 2. Is democracy still in place and Europe still united in 10? And will there be completely new forms of art, music and literature in 100? But don’t ignore the other direction this thought experiment could go: Driven by your curiosity, you could also travel into the past. How was it? What really happened? For instance, you could be the first and only twenty-first-century person to meet Siddhartha Gautama, nowadays better known as Buddha – what kind of man was he? Who shot John F. Kennedy and why? How did it feel to follow Joan of Arc? Were Johann Goethe and Friedrich Schiller more than just best friends? How did the ancient Egyptians manage to build the pyramids? You shouldn’t tell anybody about your new abilities, of course, because there are thousands of mystic secrets and unsolved enigmas mankind is so completely fascinated by. While some of the experiences you’d (hopefully) come back with could certainly help us learn from ancient times and understand more about our history, others might just be thrill seeking. But you definitely shouldn't forget to tell us the truth about the so-called Voynich Manuscript: known as “the world’s most mysterious manuscript”, written some time between 1404 and 1438 CE, never deciphered (neither the language nor the pictures), published for the first time as a complete facsimile 3 weeks ago by Yale University. Please, solve the riddle. Enter your time machine!

All my best,
Christian Kaspar Schwarm

AUGUST 2016

This book is a real life James Bond file. One without dangerous ladies, wonder weapons or pompous temples of evil. Instead, it comes with bureaucrats, torture and run-down warehouses. And while watching a 007 movie might be entertaining, I'd describe the experience of going through these pages as disconcerting. No worries, there's not a single photo in this book which you should be warned about looking at beforehand. No, it's the kafkaesque feeling that engulfs us when we get an idea of the tremendous apparatus which is at work here. It's hidden, poorly monitored, ugly and ultrabanal all at the same time. The incredible amount of work Edmund Clark and Crofton Black had to invest to collect all these snippets and pieces of evidence – or "artefacts" as they themselves call them – made me realize how difficult it is to unveil such obscure activities … not to mention the risks the authors very likely have to take. I once learned that it is not hate that is the opposite of love, but fear. We also know that the idea of "fighting fire with fire" usually just results in more fire. I regard the making of this book to be a fearless act of love. It's still a privilege to live in a society where we're allowed and able to produce, to purchase and to read a book like this. With its help we should dare to look behind the curtain. After having done so already, I'd suggest starting with the excellent afterword, written by Eyal Weizman. The yellow pages provide the required background information on the documents and photos. What you're holding in your hands right now really deserves your attention and maybe 1 or 2 hours of your time. Less than an average visit to the cinema.

All my best,
Christian Kaspar Schwarm

MAY 2016

Nowadays even electronic music labels are already celebrating their 20th anniversaries – I just realized that and I would guess there are even older ones. The one which led me to this insight is Raster-Noton, an independent company co-founded by the artist Carsten Nicolai. On the occasion of their anniversary the label rebuilt a huge light and sound installation at Berlin’s most famous club. Just google "White Circle" and "Berghain" to get an idea of the project and of the location. I’m mentioning this here because besides its visual and acoustic power, it also had a spiritual quality. People gathered themselves in a circle created out of a lot of vertical lights and some nearly invisible speakers and subwoofers. Everybody sat or laid down and many visitors closed their eyes at some point since you were still able to perceive the bright light signals through your shut eyelids. Some even meditated. Eventually the word "ritual" occurred to me and the whole thing suddenly felt like a reinterpretation of some old mystical event where all members of a tribe or a village came together to share an exceptional experience. There’s a kind of archaic yearning in all of us, looking for chances to drop our guard and connect to each other on a deeper human level. However, especially we Germans still become very sceptical when cult moments merge with political contexts. The Nazis seem to have discredited this mix forever, although there were also such modernist, pacifistic movements in the 20ies of the last century. They dared to bring together what likely belongs together: progressive thinking, natural sciences and metaphysics. Have you ever heard of the Kibbo Kift? I hadn’t until I recently discovered this book. They were far, far ahead of their time.

All my best,
Christian Kaspar Schwarm

MARCH 2016

Bill Maurer
How would You Like to Pay?
How Technology Is Changing the Future of Money
Duke University Press, 2015

DEAR FRIEND OF 8 BOOKS A YEAR,

After finishing school, my grandma Anna worked as a maid on a remote farm in the Bavarian mountains. It was a time of scarcity, but every February 2nd she got her annual wage of 20 German marks. Since she was given free board and lodging, she was able to save most of her money. After 12 years of hard work and a life full of privation, she suddenly heard of a threatening phenomenon going on in the distant cities: hyperinflation. The 27 year old woman grabbed her savings, borrowed the only bike around and drove from Obermurbach to the village of Lenggries as fast as she could. All she got there for 200 marks was 2 skeins of yarn. A little later, by November 1923, an American dollar was worth 4.2 trillion marks. As my grandma died before I was born, I could never ask her what effect this had on her. But we can imagine that her relationship to money was different than ours. Maybe hers was a more accurate one, unmasking money to reveal a mere agreement that functions only as long as all the players still agree. Today all the world’s money (including cash and checking deposits) is estimated to have a value of 28.6 trillion US dollars, with the market capitalization of all stock markets equal to 70 trillion. At the same time we face global debts of 199 trillion and – hardly conceivably – at least 630 trillion dollars for the size and scope of the global derivative markets. How many skeins of yarn would that be? This little book, written by an anthropologist, opens up a new perspective on money, describing it as a “chain of promises”. And it doesn’t forget the developing world, where most people are as far away from the stock exchanges as my grandma Anna was in her time.

All my best,
Christian Kaspar Schwarm

FEBRUARY 2016

Hacking means infiltrating a network using technology. Social hacking does the same by taking advantage of the weak point we call “the human being”. We seem to be calculable, even predictable. Take the Trojan horse as an early example of an effective social hack: a gigantic victory trophy at first sight, but it came with a price tag. Nowadays lotteries just have to place a car in a shopping mall to collect shoals of addresses in a few days – totally understandable … how else should they know where to deliver their first prize? But let’s not feel too safe just because we see through this simple marketing game, there’re a lot of others. The American artist David Horvitz played his own: He took a photo of himself, sitting by the sea, seemingly desperate with his face buried in his hands. David then put this picture onto Wikipedia's page about “Mood Disorder” and made it “free-to-use”. The bait was in the water. Look what happened. When I flipped through the pages of this artist's book, I really felt like I had stumbled into the commoditized third world of the internet. It seems to have its own economy based on interchangeable articles with stereotypical stock-images. Who in the world produces them? Who reads them? David Horvitz used them and created a conceptual artwork. It consists of frozen screenshots. It will become a time capsule and it’s being shown at the New York MoMA right now, appropriately enough as part of its ”New Photography” show. Your copy comes with a personal letter from the artist.

OCTOBER 2015

The relationship between father and son has always been a special one. On both a conscious and subconscious level it often oscillates between straightforward encouragement and undetected rivalry, honest recognition and hidden suppression, large-hearted sharing and anxious restraint. Throughout the centuries these complex layers have been the raw material for countless novels, plays and movies and will continue to engage us, most likely forever. My own father just turned 81 and the older I get, the more patterns of behavior I discover in me which were obviously influenced by him – whether I like it or not. After we visited my father to celebrate his birthday, I travelled to California where I picked up a car and started driving up the West Coast, heading to Oregon. Believe it or not, I spotted one of the best bookstores I’ve ever visited in a wonderful small town called Mendocino. Among dozens of interesting new titles, one caught my attention. It’s called “Sons + Fathers” and presents cultural icons reflecting on their begetters. Quite interestingly, sometimes a single case can tell you more about life than a collection of 100 stories. Take Sven. He has 2 sons, 1 of whom, Malo, became terribly ill at the age of 3. During one of their drives to the hospital, Malo asked his father about the song that was playing on the radio … and about its lyrics. These were written by Sting when he realized how much it still hurt to think about his ex-wife. On hearing this, Malo immediately claimed the song’s title “King of Pain” for himself. His father thought of making a book for his son when he recovered. He has, and so we have this book. Signed by father and son.

All my best,
Christian Kaspar Schwarm

SEPTEMBER 2015

Andreas Trogisch
Runway
Peperoni Books, 2015

Edition of 180 signed and numbered copies

DEAR FRIEND OF 8 BOOKS A YEAR,

How do you define non-fiction? The German director Werner Herzog once characterized his documentaries as often being more fictitious than his feature films and his feature films as sometimes more documental than his documentaries. One of the most interesting things in life is to explore such gray areas, where the world neither is white nor black – in your mind, in your actions or sometimes just beneath your feet. The latter is what happened to the maker of this extremely rare book. His object of investigation is a single runway strip, which in reality measures 90 centimeters in width and 30 meters in length. You find it at the Tempelhofer Feld in Berlin, a huge area that was part of the former Tempelhof Airport. Today a much-loved public park, this place really has a lot of stories to tell: started as a parade ground for the Prussian army, it first became a recreational area and then an airport. As such, Tempelhof was among the most important infrastructure projects of Nazi-Germany. From 1948 to 1949, the Western Allies organized the Berlin Airlift via Tempelhof – over 200,000 flights provided the isolated people of West Berlin with an incredible amount of life-saving goods, up to 12,000 tons per day. In 2014, a majority of the citizens voted against a large real estate project that the local government had planned to realize on the site. And the world keeps turning: Just a few days ago, Berlin decided to set up a camp for refugees at the former airport – at least 40,000 are expected to arrive in the city by the end of this year. In one way or another, all these events leave traces. Keeping that in mind, even an abstract picture can turn out as great non-fiction.

All my best,
Christian Kaspar Schwarm

JULY 2015

Some months ago Hillary Clinton claimed she would become the future US president for all “everyday Americans”. Sounds down-to-earth, but what does this “everyday” mean? When politicians talk of “everyday people” they sometimes misuse this term, attempting to justify a kind of resistance to looking at things from different angles and to discussing them in a more profound way. Or – you could say – it betrays a lack of willingness to see things in all their complexity. On the other hand “everyday” can mean rather the opposite: It has the potential to open our eyes to the “everyday wonders” of life. Do I seem cliché now, talking about stopping to smell the roses on your way to work? Not necessarily, since even our least subtle fellows appreciate a rose’s beauty. But take the Swiss artists Fischli & Weiss who, for decades, took hundreds of photos of airports – anonymous airfields with planes being loaded and unloaded, busses and trucks driving around. They might seem boring at first sight, but they simply aren’t. Instead they show technological and social microcosms, highly organized cross-border intersections and the backbones of one gigantic organism called global infrastructure. Boring? Not at all. So, being an “everyday human” could also mean becoming conscious of what is usually hidden. We can surprise ourselves by discovering the concepts, both the good and the failed ones, behind some structures we are confronted with every single day. Do you own a car? Where is it right now? What is it doing? Most probably, nothing. It’s parked.

All my best,
Christian Kaspar Schwarm

MAY 2015

Martin Eberle
Voyager – The Grand Tour
Drittel Books, 2015

Edition of 300

DEAR FRIEND OF 8 BOOKS A YEAR,

Jodie Foster got me wondering. I was playing around on the internet while Contact was being shown again on TV. I already knew the movie, but I realized that I know almost nothing about the sheer dimensions of our universe. It took me a short while to find some basic but by all means astounding facts. For example, have you ever wondered how many stars you can see with your bare eyes when you look at the sky on a dark and cloudless night? You won't be able to count but about 5,000. Fewer than most people expect. Every visible shining dot belongs to the Milky Way, our home galaxy. How many stars would you guess it hosts? Since Earth lies within one of the Milky Way's gigantic spiral arms – each a wall of stars that even our most modern telescopes simply can't see through – astronomers can only estimate. Still, it is certainly between 200,000,000,000 and 400,000,000,000 suns. Indeed, we're talking about billions here in 1 of, again, billions more galaxies. Keeping that vastness in mind, jump back to 1977 when a team of scientists grabbed the unique, foolhardy chance to step into the void and explore all 4 outer planets of our solar system in 1 grand tour. 2 unmanned spacecraft were sent out. Both are still functioning. Both are about to leave our planetary neighborhood behind. Each has a golden record on board which, in a distant future, could become mankind’s greatest document. Imagine yourself, as an alien, flipping through its pictures from the 1970s. What would you think about humans? An incredible book project.

All my best,
Christian Kaspar Schwarm

APRIL 2015

Every true story can still be told in a thousand ways. What is your perspective on what happened? Your conclusion? Your dramaturgy? These 3 decisions have to be made – consciously or not – before you share any narrative. While established media too often fails to make this process transparent to us, this small book is an overwhelming example of how a true story can be revealed in another, more differentiated, way. By looking through the lenses of both protagonists’ perspectives, it creates something invaluable in a fracturing world: empathy and, therefore, tolerance. Line by line it digs deeper and deeper for what really counts. Without ever dictating to you what to think about the written, it only blocks one exit for us: judging too easily, too quickly. I thought of my mother. Subsequent generations can enjoy the privilege of learning more about nearly everything. Who knows … in 30 years you might damage your son’s quantum fridge by opening it the wrong way. Fortunately this won't matter as long as not only technology evolves, but also the way we describe and perceive what goes on around us. Great artists sometimes have the ability to predict a future. This is undoubtedly an artist book – but certainly not one only about art. I'd rather call it poetic and political. I read it thoroughly from front to back: I recommend you also give yourself a chance to let its pure, radical concept unfold.

All my best,
Christian Kaspar Schwarm

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